Pages

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

With concepts like this, how is it we are caught in a perpetual desire for judging each other. We judge each others looks, our cloths, our intellects, our ideas, our choices, etc etc. We have unrealistic 'reality shows' based on judging (see American Idol and such). I mean please, Simon couldn't sing a lick's worth compared to most of the finalists on that show so why does he get to judge anything but bad hairdo's (see, see, I just judged his looks).

Let us try to be intentional about stopping the judgementalism. The Word says you'll be judge as you judged, scary thought but I think its true, and not just in the next world. I can say that I've went through some really tough times that brought tons of judgement against me, and really got me to thinking about how much I've judged others in the past. Judging others serves no good purpose does it? Other than to make you feel high and mighty, which if you know anything of God is one of the things He seems to hate most, so not a trait you want to grow. Every time you find yourself judging someone, you need to remember that you have done your fair share of horrible things whether in thought or action; and you still have plenty of time to do more things worthy of judgement before your time is over. Instead of judging, let your noticing of whatever it is you want to judge be a motivator to encourage the person to a better way.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

O mankind, it is in vain that you seek within yourself the cure for your own miseries. All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that it is not in yourself that you will discover either truth or goodness. The philosophers made these promises, but they have failed to keep them. For they do not know what your true good is, nor what is your true state. How could they provide cures for ills they did not even recognize or diagnose? For your chief maladies are pride, which cuts you off from God; sensuality, which keeps you earth-bound; and all they have done is to keep at least one of these maladies forstered. If they have given you God for your object, it is only to pander to your pride. They have made you think that you are like Him and resemble God by your nature. And those who saw the vanity of such pretension have cast you down into that other abyss, by making you believe that your nature is like that of the beasts of the field, and have led you to seek your good in lust, which is the lot of the animals. – Blaise Pascal, The Mind on FireThe Mind on Fire: An Anthology of the Writings of Blaise Pascal (Classics of Faith and Devotion)&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=widgetsamazon-20&amp;amp;amp;o=1&amp;amp;amp;p=8&amp;amp;amp;l=bpl&amp;amp;amp;asins=0781441978&amp;amp;amp;fc1=000000&amp;amp;amp;IS2=1&amp;amp;amp;lt1=_blank&amp;amp;amp;m=amazon&amp;amp;amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;amp;amp;bc1=000000&amp;amp;amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;amp;amp;f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;"align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"&amp;amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;

“We look back on history and what do we see? Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counter-revolutions, wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed, one nation dominant and then another. Shakespeare speaks of ‘the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.’

“In one lifetime I have seen my own fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that, ‘God who’s made the mighty would make them mightier yet.’ I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian proclaim to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last a thousand years; an Italian clown announce that he would restart the calendar to begin his own assumption of power. I’ve heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as a wiser than Solomon, more enlightened than Ashoka, more humane than Marcus Aurelius. I’ve seen America wealthier and in terms of weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that Americans, had they so wished, could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of their conquests.

“All in one little lifetime. All gone with the wind. England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy. Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy. Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by fears of running out of those precious fluids that keep her motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate.

“All in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.

“Behind the debris of these self-styled, sullen supermen and imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one person, because of whom, by whom, in whom, and through whom alone mankind might still have hope. The person of Jesus Christ.”